Ark : The Underfunded ICO Attempting Mass Adoption

Ark is quickly climbing the altcoin rankings. A fork of Lisk that’s committed to user friendly independent blockchain, Ark has floated ideas and made promises like private blockchain that deploy with a click of a button and SmartBridge technology to bring the separated ecosystem back together. They want to build private chains that can interact with one another, administer their own tokens and easily modify consensus. Powered by DPoS, Ark is a very ambitious blockchain project aiming for mass adoption, but it’s recent developments and market movement are solidifying Ark’s position with raw FOMO.

What is Ark?

Ark is an altcoin that was launched in March 2017 after an underfunded ICO or ‘ Token Exchange Campaign’. They raised approximately $750,000 USD. For a coin that had promised mass adoption this seemed like it was the end. Then, despite limited funding, the decision was made to proceed with the ARK Project. With the odds stacked against them, they launched the ARK network and it has been running smoothly ever since. The beating heart of Ark is a community governed DPoS consensus protocol that relies on elected nodes called delegates to add to the blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin and Ethereum that have tens of thousands of nodes mining and securing the network, there are only 51 delegates that can add to blocks on the Ark network. These delegates are rewarded 2 Ark for every block they commit to the chain. Anyone can be a delegate, but they need to ascend through Ark’s unique system of blockchain governance. Token holders vote for delegates. It is a simple system, 1 Ark = 1 Vote. Assuming that no one would knowingly vote to devalue their money, the community will always act in the best interest of the cryptocurrency. Their interest.

Say an upgrade is proposed for Ark, people can choose to support or oppose it by backing delegates that support or oppose it. If you want code A, vote for ‘code A’ supporting delegate. If you want code B, vote for ‘code B’ supporting delegate. Because of how Ark’s governance is laid out, changes can be made to the blockchain’s parameters like network fees and block sizes.

Delegate Proposals

Delegate Subreddit www.reddit.com/r/ArkDelegates

Delegate Proposals: www.forum.ark.io/category/5/delegates

Delegates can all elect to vote on a new chain that updates blockchain protocols. Up to 1/3 of the nodes can be malicious or malfunction and create a minority fork. In this case the minority fork will only produce one block every 9 seconds while the majority fork will produce 2 blocks every 9 seconds. Once again, the honest 2/3 majority will always be longer than the minority. There is no economic incentive to break this network with anything less than 66.66% of the network. This also means that there can’t be a hard fork. Supporters will need to reach consensus because mining a smaller chain is economically disincentivized.

Ark is more than just DPoS. Since their ICO, in 2016, Ark has been plotting a path towards mass adoption. To encourage users onto their network, Ark has built in a lot of functionality and borrowed from other successful blockchains to improve on what their own network can offer.

Smart Bridges

SmartBridges allow for communication among validated bridged blockchains with the ability to perform tasks and advanced functions. Through the use of SmartBridges, the ARK Crew is able to connect many popular blockchains and finally create a unifying bond among different ecosystems. As examples, the first blockchains the ARK Crew will bridge are: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Lisk.

This is all in accordance with Ark’s user friendly blockchain experience mantra. The Ark team are building a network that can create private blockchains with the push of a button, and they needed a way to connect all of these independent blockchains together. They developed smart bridge technology, which when complete, will allow Ark’s user’s to interact with other blockchains. Smart bridges can extend outside the Ark ecosystem to include other blockchains. They are currently working on bridging Ethereum and Bitcoin. This is no small thing. Smart bridges might one day make it possible to interact with Ethereum dapps or send Bitcoin from within the Ark network.

It’s a user friendly channel between multi-billion dollar cryptocurrencies, what could go wrong? Ark has a lot of competition. A lot of altcoins and even decentralized exchanges like Kyber network, are going to do something similar. OmiseGo, Stellar and Qtum are also potential bridges between popular cryptocurrencies.

Ark are also working on their Ark Smartcards. It isn’t known exactly how easy to grasp the appeal of debit cards linked to an ecosystem which can send transactions between major cryptocurrencies and private chains. . knows how these smart cards are going to work, and the road map confirms that even the team are still working out the finer details.

What is the ARK Ecosystem?

There are some cryptocurrency projects which are trying to accomplish one specific goal (Request wants to be the best worldwide payment network). There are other blockchain protocols, like ARK, which want to create numerous innovations. Here are some of the things the ARK team is working to accomplish.

Interoperability Between Blockchains. ARK has complex technologies that allow developers to command certain actions on one blockchain (like Ethereum) from a totally different blockchain (like Bitcoin). ARK wants to link together all major blockchains so that complex actions can be accomplished between them.

Smart Contracts. In the next couple of months, the Ark Virtual Machine should be completed, allowing developers to create smart contracts (a la Ethereum). ARK supports all major programming languages, so this can attract a huge range of talents from around the world.

Push-Button Deployable Blockchains. ARK is a platform for mainstream adoption. One of the most important mainstream needs of blockchain is for users and businesses to be able to easily create their own blockchains. ARK is similar to LISK in this regard (and in fact, ARK broke off of LISK), but some think ARK’s team is superior.

Wearable Payment Systems. ARK is developing hardware – wearable payment systems and cards. We haven’t got a look at these yet, but on the ARK Roadmap, this project is farther along than many.

Hardware Wallets. Another hardware project, ARK plans to introduce its own line of hardware wallets, a la Ledger. ARK’s software wallet is called by many the best digital wallet in crypto, so we’re excited to see what they might concoct in the hardware world.

Basically, ARK wants to be the technology through which all major digital blockchain networks are interlinked and cooperated. They want the ARK coin to be the fundamental currency of this system, able to make purchases and micropayments, even for payments which technically require USD, Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other currencies. If ARK accomplishes even half of what they’re setting out to do, it’ll be one of the biggest blockchain projects in the world. [/su_note]

Should I Invest in Ark Coin?

Ark is an established altcoin. People know about Ark. It is one of those coins that you see mentioned in comments and posted on Reddit. These are speculative markets. Attention matters. Ark is also promising industry leading technology. There is a planned File System (IPFS) and Database (IPDB), and the whitepaper also said that Ark would be working towards private transactions. Ark is doing a little bit of everything. If they can build that promised blockchain, it will be more valuable than most top 10 cryptocurrencies. I think competition will ultimately decide Ark's long term value. Pay attention to the progress being made on the interactive Roadmap. Announcements around any of the long promised technologies will have positive influences on Ark's price.

To get elected, delegates agree to share their profits from forging the block, with voters. Voting on Ark is a form of passive income. It might only be a few $10, $100, $1000 a week, depending on what you can invest, but it's Ark coins from doing practically nothing.

The next developments on the road map will likely be integration with wearable devices and hardware wallets, a mobile wallet release and the release of 18 new programming languages — 12 are already completed.

Ark Coin Token Mechanics

Ark tokens will be an intermediary token between the various blockchains in the Ark ecosystem. It will be the easiest to use to send coins between different chain. Private blockchains can create their own tokens and in theory they could send them, but there is no reason to. Ark is ready to go. The team wants Ark to be the core reserve cryptocurrency and payment layer for the entire ecosystem. The token allows for users to participate in the DPoS governance within the Ark system. The Ark token will also allow users to interact with all SmartBridge enabled blockchains.

"if you have a core payment module that utilizes ARK as the token of payment, and that module comes built into every deployed chain by default, many will use it for ease of use, liquidity of assets, and the fact that the core token has a large user base built in. The way the system will be designed it will also make it very easy to create a 1-click application that converts ARK tokens to the sidechain token for payment seamlessly for the user in the case that the sidechain chooses not to accept ARK directly and instead uses their asset for purchases or actions on their network. With the core ARK token implemented as payments either directly or 1-hop, it would most likely become a key reserve currency for the majority of actions in the ecosystem."

Ark Team

Ark announced that they will be registered as an SCIC in France, the first cryptocurrency registered as such in the European Union. They are incorporated as a cooperative society, which is a legislative structure that they believe matches their open source blockchain organisation. In Ark's blog they said" We have been in close contact with the French financial governmental body and are keeping a very positive two way communication." They also explained why this regulation was chosen over the more common Swiss Non-Profit Foundation that many blockchain project seek out.

In the SCiC cooperative society all members of the Ark ecosystem from employees, users, volunteers, public bodies, companies, associations all cooperate to govern Ark and can vote accordingly. This provides a massive amount of credibility to the project and allows them to work with European regulatory institutions.

ARK was founded by 27 individuals from around the globe. Currently ARK has 17 core team members, coming from 11 different countries. 10 of these 17 are listed co-founders. Mike Doty, is managing director of Ark. He comes from an impressive background in mechanical engineering working in aerospace and robotics. More relevant is his experience as Co-founder of Bitseed and Co-founder of Crypti. Ark is a fork of Lisk, and Lisk is a fork of Crypti.

Final Thoughts on ARK

ARK is one of the most remarkable projects in cryptocurrency. The ARK team is aiming to change, not just the global blockchain industry, but the world financial payments system in general. The ARK technology has big implications for the internet, the future of digital applications, and communication mechanisms between nations, languages, and governments.

This is big stuff and ARK has a lot of work to do before they achieve their goals. But with so much already accomplished, and two big milestones on the verge of completion, ARK is one of the biggest buying opportunities of Q1 2018. Buy now and we think you will definitely not regret it. Even if ARK doesn't go to the moon tomorrow, you'll still be able to enjoy ARK "dividends" from the delegate you vote for.

We think ARK will be one of the biggest crypto stories of 2018. Get in now and start paying close attention to the updates as they are released. ARK may be low-key, at least as marketing is concerned, but their ideas are huge, and you can bet when they finally ask for your attention, they will 100% deserve it.

How to Invest in Ark?

To learn more about investing in Ark read Coinlist's complete guide. Find tradeable ARK/BTC and ARK/ETH pairs on the best exchanges, and find out about upcoming developments and other important investor information. Read the complete investor guide here.

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